From Publishers Weekly
This powerful narrative by the author of The Marines of Autum is an endearing piece of warrior's nostalgia, written with his accustomed skill by a seasoned writer. Returning to Korea, Brady revisits some of the places where he fought as a Marine platoon commander. In the opening, Brady finds his old battlefield of Hill 749 within sight of North Korean emplacements, although well-defended by a South Korean army vastly improved from what he remembers from 50-plus years ago. The rest of the narrative shifts back and forth, beginning with the author's nerve-wracking stroke to his going to Korea to write the Parade article on which this book is based. As Brady rides through Seoul with skyscrapers on every side, he remembers seeing it in 1951, when there wasn't a building taller than two stories left standing. Fellow Marines, from "the Skipper" (the company commander, the late Rhode Island governor and senator John Chaffee) on down, appear in their old age, and in their youth when they faced the Chinese with everything from artillery to bayonets. Brady, who expresses grave reservations about the Iraq War, sometimes moves from topic to topic fast enough to lose readers, but this book marks a highly admirable addition to his distinguished body of work. (Apr.)

Kirkus Reviews
"Graceful, even elegant, and always eloquent tribute to men at arms in a war that, in a way, never ended."

Review
"James Brady has done it again.  A riveting and illuminating insight into a dark corner of the world."--Tim Russert, NBC's Meet the Press "His evocation of their lives and his lost youth is most moving, and so, too, are his notes on the passing of former comrades... Graceful, even elegant, and always eloquent tribute to men at arms in a war that, in a way, never ended."--Kirkus

Kirkus
"His evocation of their lives and his lost youth is most moving..."

Kirkus
"...Graceful, even elegant, and always eloquent tribute to men at arms in_a war that, in a way, never ended."

Book Description
Half a century after he fought there as a young lieutenant of Marines, James Brady returns to the brooding Korean ridgelines and mountains to sound Taps for a generation. It's been 15 years since Brady first wrote of Korea in The Coldest War, drawing raves from Walter Cronkite and The New York Times, which called it "a superb personal memoir of the way it was."

In the spring of 2003 Brady and Pulitzer-winning combat photographer Eddie Adams, a couple of old Marines, "gentlemen rankers off on a spree," flew in Black Hawk choppers and trekked the Demilitarized Zone where it meanders into North Korea, interviewing four-star generals and bunking in with tough U.S. Recon troops, in Brady's words, "raw meat on the point of a sharpened stick." The two Marine veterans bond with this handful of youthful GIs confronting the loopy and nuclear saber-rattling North, in a contemporary Korea which just might become the war we have to fight next. Brady recalls that first time on bloody Hill 749, the men who died there, what happened to the Marines who lived to make it home, and experiences yet again the emotional pull of a lifelong love affair with the Corps in which they all served.

With consummate skill James Brady summons up the past and illuminates the present, be it the Korea of "the forgotten war", the Yanks who fought there long ago or today's soldiers standing wary sentinel over "the scariest place in the world". The result is uplifting, inspiring, often heart-breaking, and this new Brady memoir proves as powerful as his first.


From the Back Cover
Praise for James Brady: The Coldest War:"His story reads like a novel, but it is war reporting at its best--a graphic depiction, in all its horrors, of the war we've almost forgotten."--Walter Cronkite"Mr. Brady has written a superb personal memoir of the way it was. What distinguishes Mr. Brady's book is its clarity and modesty; there is no heroic flag-waving here." --The New York Times"A marvelous memoir. A sensitive and superbly written narrative that eventually explodes off the pages like a grenade in the gut...taut, tight, and telling." --Dan Rather The Marine:"In The Marine, James Brady again gives us a novel in which history is a leading character, sharing the stage in this case with a man as surely born to be a gallant warrior as any knight in Sixth century Camelot." --Kurt Vonnegut  The Marines of Autumn:"Mr. Brady knows war, the smell and the feel of it."-The New York Times"Brady has stormed publishing high ground to become, arguably, our foremost novelist currently writing on the subject of Marines at war."-Publishers Weekly"The Marines of Autumn is a masterpiece that recalls the era with awesome authenticity. The novel's outcome is one of thunderous dramatic beauty and power."-The Associated Press   

About the Author
James Brady commanded a Marine rifle platoon during the Korean War and was awarded the Bronze Star for valor. He writes weekly for Parade Magazine and for Advertising Age. He lives in Manhattan and in East Hampton, New York.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Half a century after he fought there as a young lieutenant of Marines, James Brady returns to the brooding Korean ridge-lines and mountains to sound taps for a generation." In the spring of 2003 Brady and Pulitzer Prize-winning combat photographer Eddie Adams flew in Black Hawk choppers and trekked the Demilitarized Zone where it meanders into North Korea, interviewing four-star generals and bunking in with tough U.S. recon troops, in Brady's words, "raw meat on the point of a sharpened stick." The two Marine veterans bond with this platoon of youthful GIs confronting the loopy and nuclear saber-rattling North, in a contemporary Korea that just might become the battleground where we have to fight our next war. Brady recalls that first time on bloody Hill 749, the men who died there, what happened to the Marines who lived to make it home, and experiences yet again the emotional pull of a lifelong love affair with the Corps in which they all served.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This powerful narrative by the author of The Marines of Autum is an endearing piece of warrior's nostalgia, written with his accustomed skill by a seasoned writer. Returning to Korea, Brady revisits some of the places where he fought as a Marine platoon commander. In the opening, Brady finds his old battlefield of Hill 749 within sight of North Korean emplacements, although well-defended by a South Korean army vastly improved from what he remembers from 50-plus years ago. The rest of the narrative shifts back and forth, beginning with the author's nerve-wracking stroke to his going to Korea to write the Parade article on which this book is based. As Brady rides through Seoul with skyscrapers on every side, he remembers seeing it in 1951, when there wasn't a building taller than two stories left standing. Fellow Marines, from "the Skipper" (the company commander, the late Rhode Island governor and senator John Chaffee) on down, appear in their old age, and in their youth when they faced the Chinese with everything from artillery to bayonets. Brady, who expresses grave reservations about the Iraq War, sometimes moves from topic to topic fast enough to lose readers, but this book marks a highly admirable addition to his distinguished body of work. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Parade magazine columnist Brady (The Marines of Autumn) was a marine officer in the Korean War. In 2003, he returned to the scene of his combat experiences, now the Demilitarized Zone, and here uses the occasion to ruminate on the companions of his youth, all of whom seem to have been brilliant, destined to be famous, or tragically doomed. He also has a considerable amount to say about growing old, the pain of loss and the joy of achievement, and the changes that combat brings about in young men. Not unaware of the parallels with America's latest war, he contrasts the 37,000 American dead in his war with the thousand dead in Iraq at the time of writing. Despite the title, the book has little to say about North Korea and is more an act of looking back. Filled with a moderate degree of insight, careful disclosures about old comrades, and a healthy amount of self-deprecation, this successful journalistic memoir, sure to be widely promoted, is a very good candidate for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/04.]-Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews